This week I was traveling in the capital with a group of our readers, because every now and then we offer trips from the rest of the republic to “political Berlin”. If it can be arranged, I would like to come along for an evening, this time in an old Berlin beer hall together with the left-wing parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek. We were standing a little apart when an entrepreneur joined us for small talk and it didn’t take long until we were talking about Germany as a location.
The entrepreneur has obviously achieved some prosperity, first with solar systems and then with heat pumps. He has renovated a representative property in his northern German hometown, he has built a new company hall outside, he is doing well and he makes no secret of the fact that he tends not to vote for the left: “I have to pull myself together today,” he said before curiosity took over and he approached Reichinnek.
And yet, at the end of the conversation, three heads nodded in unison: hers, his and mine. The reason was China. The man said that he would love to sell German products – but that he could hardly do that with a clear conscience. He has to admit that the current electricity storage systems from China are not only cheaper, they are also better. He also observes this with other components.
The new “Made in Germany”
To be honest, there is now hardly anything wrong with cars from Chinese manufacturers. For a long time now, no one has been bothered by the fact that IT devices are built in China.
I go even further: “Made in China” is the new “Made in Germany”. The British introduced this label of origin around 1900 to warn against cheap imports from Germany. Suddenly the slogan became a world-famous sign of quality because the German products were cheap and good at the same time.
Similar today. I myself am one of those who was skeptical about Chinese “plastic waste” for a long time and considered it to be ecologically catastrophic consumer nonsense. But that’s over. On the contrary, goods from China now regularly combine real costs, decent quality and tasteful design.
Important visit: Friedrich Merz, here next to Chinese President Xi Jinping, traveled to China for the first time as Chancellor on Wednesday.
Photo: dpa/Michael Kappeler
When I was last in China, it became clear to me that those who don’t take the country and its opportunities seriously are affording themselves a rather arrogant luxury. Friedrich Merz, who is there right now, will feel the same way. VW boss Oliver Blume, who is part of the Chancellor’s economic delegation, also recently spoke again about the “China speed” that he admired so much – and how he advises a respectful look at the country that he knows well and in which he even studied.
Read more: Visiting China with Stephan Weil – Thoughts from the Far East
Learn from China? Three nodding heads
In any case, we should leave the trenches of cultural warfare and no longer overemphasize system questions, I suggest. At least it doesn’t help your own competitiveness. In addition, it is not only Blume who notices how much the local society tries to improve its quality of life through technology, through social concepts, but also through environmental protection and sustainability.
A former colleague of mine went to China as a correspondent, and with a very critical attitude. It didn’t take long until he confessed: People can do something, they want something, and it would often be as unfair to them as to their country if one thought that there was nothing there but widespread post-communist servitude.
Of course, there are downsides. But still: Customers have long since formed their opinions, just like they did back then with “Made in Germany”. In the end, they want an inexpensive product that works, and then the hot air fryer is ordered from China just like the solar storage system, and it’s time to get off the high horse.
Maybe instead we should start thinking about what the Chinese are doing right and what we can learn from them. In any case, a journalist, a leftist and an entrepreneur from the rest of the republic nodded when they talked about it in the capital.
